Lynn Woolsey

August 04, 2010

Over at Daily Kos, David Sirota says President Obama is meaner to the left than he is to Republicans:
Yesterday at OpenLeft, I wrote a post about how the Obama administration unduly shies away from confrontation with Republicans and conservatives. Whether this is a product of the president's personal fetishization of conciliation or a product of a right-of-center political ideology none of us can know because none of us are in his head.

July 22, 2010

March 08, 2010

One day, I hope, we will look back at the health care debate as a low point in our national political psyche. The Obama administration and its allies in Congress are on the cusp of bringing some measure of reason to the health care system -- a system so profligate, irrational and cruel that nearly any reform born of deliberate intent could not help but improve it significantly. It's a reform designed in the mold of classic moderate Republicanism, melding fiscal responsibility and compassion for the poor and sick with a series of bold experiments to nudge medicine toward efficiency.

December 24, 2009

On the eve of the Senate vote, Representative Louise Slaughter, chair of the House Rules Committee, became the latest progressive to join a growing faction of liberals who have called for Congress to the kill health-care reform bill—and the first prominent legislator to do so. “The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago,” Slaughter wrote in an op-ed published yesterday on CNN.com. “A conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills.

October 26, 2009

Many liberals are hailing Senate Majority leader Harry Reid’s decision to pick the opt-out version of the public option over the trigger as a progressive victory. Representative Lynn Woolsey, co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus agrees--and thinks there’s no reason the House shouldn’t go even farther, and include a strong public option in its bill.
Of course, we already know the House bill will be stronger than even the version that Reid endorsed today. It will be a national plan, with all states participating from the start.

September 29, 2008

A lot of holdouts from the safe-seat left, including three of ten members from Massachusetts (Delahunt, Tierney, Lynch), much of the Congressional Black Caucus (including John Lewis, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Barbara Lee, Bennie Thompson, and Bobby Rush). Also notable: Lynn Woolsey, a strong California liberal who is extremely close to Pelosi; Hawaii's Neal Abercrombie, another leading progressive; and Dennis Kucinich.
A surprise yes: Oklahoma freshman second-termer Dan Boren, son of former senator David Boren, and a Democrat in a very pro-Bush area.
Full roll call here.

February 12, 2007

LAST SATURDAY, DEMOCRATIC Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York mounted the stage at the antiwar rally on the Mall. Though he doesn’t sit on the relevant committees, he’d just introduced a gutsy bill in the House to cut off funds for Bush’s “surge” and begin withdrawal from Iraq, and he was hoping to present it to the crowd. But, sadly, the rally’s organizers had chosen Representatives Dennis Kucinich, Lynn Woolsey, and Maxine Waters,who also have Iraq bills, to speak instead.

December 12, 2005

Once upon a time, the Democratic family consisted of two basic types of politicians--those who supported the Iraq war and those who were against it. As the war dragged on and the political climate changed, however, varied new species began to evolve, with all manner of ideas and opinions about the occupation. For months, these different Democratic factions lived more or less in harmony. But Pennsylvania Representative John Murtha's dramatic call last month for a fast U.S. exit from Iraq was like a climate-altering asteroid event.